About 20 so-called “religious leaders” sent a letter to President Obama on Tuesday, on the heels of the Supreme Courts horrendous Hobby Lobby ruling petitioning for a “robust religious exemption” to President Obama’s announced executive order that would make it illegal for all federal contractors to discriminate in the workplace against LGBT people

“An executive order that does not include a religious exemption will significantly and substantively hamper the work of some religious organizations that are best equipped to serve in common purpose with the federal government.,” it said. “When the capacity of religious organizations is limited, the common good suffers.” […]

“Without a robust religious exemption . . . this expansion of hiring rights will come at an unreasonable cost to the common good, national unity and religious freedom.”

Longtime LGBT activist, and former Executive Director of both the NYC Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project and the NGLTF (when they actually did something) released the followinf statement on how disastrous it would be for the LGBT community should the Hobby Lobby case influence a religious exemption to President Obama’s executive order:

“Hobby Lobby dramatically escalates the harm that will be caused if President Obama succumbs to growing pressure from religious and anti-gay forces and (with implicit or explicit approval from HRC) puts an ENDA-like religious exemption in the promised Executive Order (EO) to prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination by federal contractors. While largely under the radar, this is, in fact, a crisis situation.

“Such an exemption would have been bad enough before Hobby Lobby, but the decision makes it even more deadly. The Hobby Lobby majority said the decision shouldn’t be read to undermine employment nondiscrimination laws. BUT if the EO contains the ENDA exemption, there’s nothing to stop the reasoning in Hobby Lobby from having full force and effect in justifying anti-LGBT discrimination by federal contractors – pushing the door even more widely open for discrimination against our people for essentially any reason whatsoever.

“The only acceptable religious exemption is the one long-contained in Title VII. Anything else can spell disaster for years to come, including profoundly weakening the impact of future federal nondiscrimination laws and our hopes to secure meaningful civil rights protections in the 29 states that still lack them. There is no moral or political justification for President Obama to cave and endorse LGBT people having less protections from discrimination than other Americans. This issue is not a side show; it is core to our equality.”

Will Kohler is one of America's best known LGBT historians, He is also a a accredited journalist and the owner of Back2Stonewall.com.
A longtime gay activist Will fought on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic with ACT-UP and continues fighting today for LGBT acceptance and full equality.
Will’s work has been referenced on such notable media venues as BBC News, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The Daily Wall Street Journal, Hollywood Reporter, and Raw Story.
Back2Stonewall has been recently added to the Library of Congress' LGBTQ+ Studies Web Archive.
Mr. Kohler is available for comment, interviews and lectures on LGBT History.
Contact: Will@Back2Stonewall.com